If I had to eat just ONE kind of vegetables my whole life I would probably opt for artichokes. My love for this vegetable is immense.
I love their distinct flavour, their special texture and also the fact that they are not too easy to “handle”.
You have to do some work if you want to enjoy them and in that they’re just like life. :)

Every time I’m back to Puglia, the Italian region where I grew up and where they are massively grown, I have an envy attack.
Last time I went there I almost turned as green as an artichoke when I saw my favourite, thornless carciofi costing just 3 euros for 7 pieces at the market, grrrrrrrr!!!
Why are they so expensive here in Holland and, most of all, often old and sloppy???

Anyway, back to the preparation of this wonderful vegetable. Cleaning it is a lot work (see photos and recipe) and you eliminate quite a lot of this amazing flower, as I often hear during my cooking workshops when I show how to do it.
So what? What you have after all that work is something totally DELICIOUS, so definitely worth the hassle!
And you can use it for a wonderful frittata just like I do.

Clean the artichokes by removing the stems (which you can peel and use too like I did for this frittata! See TIP at the end of the recipe) then the hard, outer leaves (see how I do it in this video).

Place the artichokes in a bowl with cold water and a little lemon juice or vinegar so that they don’t get dark. Leave them in their “bath” for at least 10 minutes.

Meanwhile lightly beat the eggs with a dash of milk or cream, grated Parmesan, salt and pepper.

Cut the artichokes into thin slices and fry them in olive oil together with the crushed garlic cloves. They usually tend to get too dry so add a little hot water from time to time and let them gently cook until soft. Season with finely chopped parsley, salt and pepper.

Lay the artichokes in a baking dish lined with baking parchment.
Add the egg mixture and spread everything evenly inside the dish.

Bake the frittata in the oven for about 20 minutes or until it feels firm under your fingers and becomes golden brown.

Leave to cool a bit and serve lukewarm or at room temperature.

TIP: you can also eat the artichoke stems. First you have to trim the harder part around them and then put them in lemony (or vinegary) water like the rest of the artichokes. After that you can stew or fry them together with the artichokes.

What do you eat in the Italian region of Puglia (the heel of the boot, where I grew up) at l’ora dell’aperitivo (aperitivo time) besides olives, panzerotti and a lot of other wonderful things? Taralli, of course!

These small and crunchy “dough rings” are not always easy to find outside of Italy but are very easy to make at home.
They make me think a bit of bagels because they are briefly boiled in water before going into the oven. The comparison stops there, actually, because taralli are not big, soft and pleasantly “chewy” like bagels but very small and crispy, and that’s because they contain a lot of extra virgin olive oil and white wine and no water at all.
They can also be made by only baking them in the oven but thanks to the preceding boiling phase they get shinier and crispier, something which enhances their look, feel and taste.
With friend Claudio Varone I recently made them to sell them during a little Sunday market organised in Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen restaurant in Amsterdam and we had a lot of fun playing “market sellers” for an afternoon.
Making your own taralli is a lot of work but really fun to do. Even when you have to roll 2 kilos of dough like we did. ;)
And one thing is for sure: the more you make, the easier it gets. At a certain point I was rolling them with two hands, in “stereo”! :D
We made taralli in three different flavours: with fennel seeds, with dry oregano and with black pepper. You can of course invent your own flavours and combinations. Other classics are spicy chilli flakes and fried onion chips, and you can also try with paprika powder, garlic, sundried tomatoes, whatever you like!
They’re also very lovely as a gift, once nicely packaged.
So get started and roll it, baby! And let the music inspire you. ;)
Taralli di Claudio e Nicoletta

Prepare the dough by mixing well all the ingredients. If you notice that the dough it is not malleable enough and/or it crumbles a little (also while rolling the taralli) add a little extra white wine. We also regularly moistened our hand palms with a little water for better results. Leave the dough to rest for about 1,5 to 2 hours in a large bowl covered with plastic foil as this promotes the right elasticity.

Cut a piece of dough (keep on protecting the rest of the dough with plastic foil) and roll it like a “sausage” with a diameter of about 3 cm.

Cut small pieces of the big “sausage” and roll them with your hands into smaller “sausages” of about 8-10 cm. long (which is about the length of a teaspoon, thats’ what we used to make them all the same length). Make a ring with each little dough roll and press the two ends gently between thumb and forefinger so that the taralli get properly sealed.

Plunge the taralli in a pan of salted boiling water and let them “swim” in it until they come floating to the surface. Remove them from the pan with a slotted spoon and place them on a baking sheet lined with baking paper.

For the black pepper version we did not mix the pepper in the dough but dusted the wet taralli after boiling them, just before baking. Bake the taralli in the preheated oven at 200°C for about 25-30 minutes. When they have cooled, put them again in the oven at 80°C for about 8-10 minutes so that they get completely dry and crisp.

Store them in an airtight container. If well protected they remain crunchy for weeks.

Corzetti or croxetti are a beautiful type of pasta from the Italian region Liguria that many Liguri do not even know since it’s being consumed mainly in the Eastern side of the region. My Mum, for example, – a real Genovese – had never seen them or even heard their name.
They are made with wonderful carved wooden stamps with lovely symbols embossed on both sides (I have 5 types of stamps engraved with stars, suns, laurel branches, trees and flowers). Yesterday I enjoyed myself a lot preparing the corzetti with my friend Claudio Varone.
You can find some more information about corzetti on this Wikipedia page.

We made them mixing spelt flour and chestnut flour and then served them with a traditional Ligurian walnut sauce, the one my Mum always makes at home. We slightly modified it by adding pine nuts because we did not have enough walnuts. A truly scrumptious sauce. I advise you to add, as we did, a lot more marjoram than the amount you see next to the food processor (I love this herb, for me it represents the true smell of Liguria, much more than basil) and serve WITHOUT Parmesan or pepper.
On our first plate we put both cheese and black pepper but on the second one (the dish was too good, we both had ​​THREE servings each!!!) we avoided them and the corzetti tasted a lot better. Parmesan or grated grana and pepper, in fact, distract you a bit from the delicate intensity of the sauce that is already very rich in flavour (and cheese). If you want a bit more flavour add a little salt to the sauce.
The procedure, the ingredients and the quantities can be found in the almost-video. Enjoy!

This recipe is perfect for the week-end because baking bread is usually a week-end thing. You need time, calmness and possibly no ringing phones – even if I usually don’t answer anyway if I don’t feel like it or when I’m doing something else – and no postmen who come to deliver something for which you have to sign. The ideal day is a rainy one, one of those grey days in which you feel like staying home with warm slippers on and cook.
Seen this year’s Dutch Summer weather (an average of 16° and often rainy) I regularly feel like making some nice comfort food like bread.

In the past I always avoided baking bread because I find that bread is an art and therefore you have to make it in the right way, and if you want to make it in the right way you need to be really good at it (fact is I’m not – yet – since I’m a cook but not a baker and I don’t have lots of experience with it).
But… since I bought a nice stand mixer for my Italian cooking school in Amsterdam I suddenly felt like using it (otherwise what did I buy it for??? ;D) and so I started experimenting with it.
For example with this relatively fast and easy-to-make bread prepared with three different types of flour: spelt, corn and kamut.
The proportions can vary, I used these because I had exactly these quantities of flour left in my pantry but next time I’ll try it with a little more corn and a little less spelt to see if the bread gets any crunchier and acquires a more interesting texture and taste. Non that it wasn’t nice the way I made it, it’s just that I LOVE corn. :)

To enrich the bread I added a handful of hazelnuts but you can surely vary and use walnuts, some fried onions like the ones used in the Indonesian cuisine (they’re called bawang goreng, here in Amsterdam you can find several makes among which Go-Tan) or a mix of hazelnuts, raisins and dried figs for a sweeter taste, perfect for breakfast or after dinner with a wonderful cheese plateau.

If you don’t have a mixer you can of course prepare the dough by hand but you’ll have to use less water because this mixture is quite sticky and kneeding it by hand would be very challenging, I guess. Obviously the end result will be slightly different.

The three breads I made have been baked in two different ways: one of them has been cooked on a pizzastone that I pre-heated in the oven at 180°C.
I find that the one made on the stone is slightly better: especially the bottom of the bread is more porous, as you can see in the picture with the three upside-down loaves. Therefore it’s slightly crunchier but I have to say that also the two loaves on the non-stick oven dishes weren’t bad at all. Here’s the recipe.

Dissolve the beer yeast in a little lukewarm water together with the honey and 100 gr of previously sieved spelt flour. Leave the mixture to rest for a while (about 20 minutes) in a warm place, for example on top of the hot oven (but remember to put a thick cloth or an oven glove underneath the container to avoid overheating).

Sieve the other two types of flours in the mixer bowl and add the water bit by bit, then add the olive oil.

Turn on the mixer with the special dough hook and keep on mixing until you obtain a nice, sticky mixture, then add the hazelnuts and the salt mixing for one more minute.

The mixture you obtain should be quite sticky (see pictures). If it’s not you can add a little bit of water or olive oil.

Leave to rise in the mixing bowl on a warm place, covered with plastic foil.

Form the loaves using a dough spatula and your hands dusted with abundant flour. The flour is really necessary otherwise the dough will stick to your hands.
Dust the loaves with coarse polenta corn mixed with spelt flour and cut their surfaces diagonally in both directions to create the decorative effect you see in the pictures and to make rising in the oven easier.

Bake in the pre-heated oven (180°C) for about 25 minutes or until well cooked.

Leave to cool down on a baking wire rack to avoid condense that would make the bottom of the loaves moist and soft.

For the “Photographed recipes” series, another “Surf & Turf”.
Oh yes baby! Apparently the one I told you about in my last post wasn’t enough and on top of all that this one is even a fusion experiment.
This is not exactly a Summer recipe but I made this last week when here in Amsterdam it was practically Autumn and I was feeling cold and in need of some warm and earthy comfort food.
I had never used quinoa before besides from boiling it and dressing is with olive oil as a side dish. Since I’m experimenting with cereals that are not the usual wheat and rice I’m having fun trying recipes with ingredients that are quite new for me.
This “quinotto“, a quinoa risotto that is, is the first result of my experiments.
I can say that I’m quite satisfied with it since it tasted really nice!
The magic touch was given by using for the risotto not the usual white wine but one of the “turfiest” Scotch whiskies on Earth, Ardbeg Ten Years Old (LUV it!). This divine liquid gives the dish such a wonderful and intense smoky flavour that just smelling it is a pleasure already. A classic Single Malt from Islay, the famous island called “the Queen of the Hebrides” with her fabulous whiskies, a place I definitely long to visit, hopefully very soon…
Then there’s the porcinistock. You can make it yourselves by simply adding some dried porcini mushrooms to a home-made vegetable stock or you can use, as I did, the organic porcini stock from Vitam, which I find excellent (but I don’t know if it exists outside Holland and Germany…). I’d say dump the standard porcini stock cubes full of glutamate that would ruin the pureness of this dish, better to add some dried to porcini to a simple basic stock.
And of course we have the wonderful texture given by the quinoa that makes everything even more interesting.The combination between this aromatic quinotto with the sauteed veggies and a humble fish like pollock, all piled up on top of each other thanks to my latest kitchen gadget (a food ring with pusher), is really an exceptional one.
But why should I keep on telling you about something that you’d better try yourselves?
And if you like, pair it with a little Ardbeg Ten Years Old mixed with some chilled water on a stormy winter night while sitting in front of the fireplace with someone special, pretending to be in Scotland. So romantic…

Dice the carrot and the onion and keep them separated.
Fry the onion in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil until soft, then add the carrot cubes.
Cook the carrot until quite tenderized but still al dente and put aside.

Warm up a few spoons of olive oil in a big enough pan, without onion or anything else. Toast the quinoa in it for one minute while stirring, add some whisky, stir further and let the alcohol evaporate. After that, keep on cooking adding stock and stirring regularly.
Once the quinoa is about half cooked add some of the chopped Spring onions’ green leaves (wash them first and remove the toughest and wilted parts).
Quinoa tends to stay quite al dente. Let it dry well (if it’s too moist it cannot be pressed in shape correctly) and leave it to rest for three minutes off the flame and with the lid on the pan.

In the meantime fry the Spring onions (the white parts with about 3-4 cm stalk) in e.v. olive oil, season them with salt and set aside.

Cook the pollock in the same oil you used for the Spring onions and add the white wine. Let it evaporate and season with salt and black pepper, then break in chunks.

Grate the courgettes in the pan with the carrot and onion mixture and cook for half a minute. Remove from the flame, season with salt and pepper and keep warm.

Place the ring on a hot serving plate a fill it with quinotto by a third. Level well with the pusher and cover with some vegetables (another third).
Level the veggies too and add some fish, pressing well with the pusher. Lift the ring carefully to keep everything in place. I rinsed the ring with hot water between ingredients.
Garnish with two fried Spring onions.

Another little how-to video, this time with Valentina who’s an expert in fish and seafood like lots of people who come from Bari. I call the Baresi the “Japanese of Italy” because they’re real fish freaks and love to eat everything preferably raw.
Seen the high quality of fresh fish and seafood in Puglia that’s no wonder: fresher than fresh and extremely tasty, just like the stuff Valentina bought in Torre a Mare – a village on the sea near Bari – to prepare our next vintage dish (soon to be seen on this blog).

The video explains just how to de-beard the mussels (that means removing the seaweeds attached to the shells) and open them. Before doing that it’s a good idea to leave them for at least a few hours in slightly salted water to make sure they expel the sand they have inside.

Once opened you can eat them raw (if you’re sure they come from a clean, PRISTINE mussel nursery) or use them in lots of different dishes. I find mussels very decorative when served inside half of their shells, so black and beautifully shiny.

In the course of the 11 years that I’ve been teaching Italian cooking I’ve noticed that some vegetables are a total mystery to most non-Italian cooks.
Take fennel and artichoke, for example: here in Holland I always have to demonstrate how to clean them and what to use or throw away because most people have never had the chance (or the courage) to actually “tackle” some of these wonderful veggies.

So if you can’t clean small Italian and French artichokes (for the big French ones we’ll need another video since they’re quite different…) not to worry! Cime di Rapa comes to your rescue! :)

Just watch this video, grab a bunch of beautiful Violets from France or small artichokes from Liguria or Puglia and stuff yourself with them after cleaning them perfectly well!